Freshman magician Michael Blackburn asked assistant principal Doug Faris to volunteer for an act. Blackburn told Faris to close his hands and make fists. During the time his hands were closed, Faris’s hands were not touched at all. After a minute, he is told to open his hands and when he did, there was a black spot of marker on his hand that was not there before. Faris could not figure out how Blackburn could have done this.

Blackburn has practiced and performed magic for the past nine years. His magic career started when his father bought him a magic kit as a Christmas present. Blackburn elaborated on how he learns and practices his magic tricks, which consists of learning tricks from books, DVDs, Youtube and showing his family new tricks as a trial run before showing others.

“I mainly get my practice off of doing new tricks on people. . . . If I have a new trick, I would show a whole bunch of people, but that might not be the best idea because it’s new so they might somehow figure it out,” Blackburn said.

Blackburn enjoys doing magic due to the fact that it seems to make people happy and that it gives him opportunities to meet new people. He tends to receive reactions of joy, surprise and astonishment. History teacher Pete Rahas described his reaction when he saw one of Blackburn’s tricks in his class.

“I immediately wanted to find out how he does it, and I tried to figure it out but I just couldn’t. . . . He’s very humble about his ability [and] he’s an amazing magician,” Rahas said.

Although Blackburn mentioned that he loves all of his tricks, he described one of his favorite tricks overall.

“It’s [a trick] where someone tells me a playing card and I open up a box of cards and [that card] is the only one that’s face down in the deck. That’s my favorite [one],” Blackburn said.

Blackburn also has experience performing in front of audiences. He performed for rock music artist Alice Cooper during one of Cooper’s events in Arizona. While he lived in Phoenix, Arizona, he performed live much of the time, but as his family moved to Ohio very recently, he has not performed live for any events.

Blackburn expounded on his plans for the future, clarifying that he would most likely keep doing magic as a hobby rather than career.

“[A career involving magic] would be awesome, but I just have to look at the big picture and . . . if I could be more successful doing something else, then I would do that,” Blackburn said.

Faris expressed his own ideas and excitement about Blackburn’s abilities.

“I think it’s really fun that kids develop personalities in high school, and if that’s something that he enjoys doing and people enjoy being around him when he does it, I think that’s great,” Faris said.

With hope and dedication, Blackburn wants to continue to use his ability to perform his tricks for others to make people happy as he wants. He wants to continue to practice and learn more and more tricks and possibly become the next David Blaine or David Copperfield.